| Abstrakt: |
Whether within the academy or without, fieldwork is the crux of anthropological experience. This has become clear as anthropologists in Brazil become more involved in the production of expert reports as part of the professional practice of anthropology. Once conceived of as an “exercise in applied anthropology, marginal in relation to proper scientific work” (L’Estoile, Neiburg and Sigaud 2000: 237), anthropological expert reports are a form of intervention outside the academic sphere that is, unfortunately, often associated with the production of a ‘lesser knowledge’. In face of the increasing mobilization of civil society and the formation of representative movements of indigenous peoples, of quilombos, (the descendents of runaway slave communities in Brazil), and of other social groups, the demand for specialists in anthropology has emerged in institutions slated to defend the rights of minorities and of Brazilian citizens at large. Brazil’s Attorney General’s Office (Ministério Público Federal—MPF) and other administrative agencies stand foremost in handling state policies that legitimate their status and administer this due recognition in exercising their constitutional rights. |
